I haven’t watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy since Katherine Heigl killed Jeffrey Dean Morgan and then whined about how she missed the guy she MURDERED for an entire fucking year. At the beginning, back in, wow, 2005, when Grey’s Anatomy was a midseason replacement and a surprise hit with a sexy, diverse cast and its own distinct dialect (seriously?!), I liked it a lot.

And then everyone on that show became a complete and utter asshole. Meredith Grey was always a bit of a dishrag, but back at the beginning Christina was awesome, and all the men were hot, and Bailey was just super. Even Katherine Heigl was pretty terrific, when she ripped her shirt off and yelled at everyone for making fun of her for being an underwear model and proclaimed that while they were in $100,000 worth of debt apiece, she paid her way with her spectacular rack. Remember? That was great. But then they all became jerks. And even pretty, pretty Kate Walsh and Eric Dane couldn’t fix it, because let me repeat myself just this once, Izzie KILLED SOMEONE and then moaned about it for a YEAR.

So when show creator Shonda Rimes spun off Private Practice, I jumped ship on whiny, bitchy Grey’s Anatomy and went with Kate and her pretty hair to California. Because at that point Addison, Bailey, and Torres were the only people on Grey’s Anatomy that I didn’t want to set on fire every Thursday night. it had everything I’d originally liked about Grey’s Anatomy with none of the whining: very pretty people who are ostensibly fantastic at their jobs, an excellent soundtrack, ridiculous medical cases that make you go google shit and panic mid-show.

Hi, guys. Long time no whine. I’m just popping in here to rant briefly about how much I hate this ad the cumbersomely named New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes is running against Governor Paterson (NEW JERSEY!)’s proposed tax on bottled drinks like soda and juice.

Oh my Christ on a tiny little crutch. Seriously, she might as well be saying, “How dare you infringe on my right to feed my child highly processed corn sugar in liquid form! Respect mah authoritah!”

Now, I don’t watch a lot of commercials. I have a tifaux, after all. And even though my new HD box (YEEEEESSSSS, HD BOX) is kind of glitchy and bitchy and likes to randomly NOT RECORD THE SOUP, I still record almost everything and watch it at least a little delayed. But I do occasionally watch live TV. Take, for instance, last Sunday, when I watched like seventeen consecutive hours of USA’s Law & Order: SVU Ripped From the Headlines marathon. And I saw that commercial like thirty times. I was ready to punch that whingeing hag by the end of it. God, lady. Suck it the fuck up. Don’t make me list all the things I can see in that kitchen of yours that indicate you can afford an extra five frigging bucks a week. Give your kid water. Mix your whiskey with seltzer, like I do. Brew your own damn iced tea. Or just save up the bottles and get the deposits back. Voilà, taxes canceled out.

And tell the American Beverage Association, which paid for that ad, to shove it. Same to the state of Iowa, with their billion dollars a year in corn subsidies.

P.S. Friends, I promise my shameful hiatus will end soon. I plan to write about Justified and In Plain Sight quite soon, and at the end of the month the fourth season of Friday Night Lights will begin airing on NBC, and I’ll start up the recaps again. Sorry for sucking lately.

It’s been six days and my love affair with the Olympics has ended. Or, to be more accurate, it’s been EIGHTEEN GODDAMN YEARS and NBC has BROKEN MY HEART.

I have not fallen out of love with the Olympics; no, I still go to bed every night during this fortnight murmuring “Citius, altius, fortius,” I’m still obsessively monitoring the Excel spreadsheet that features my Olympic pool (I’m currently in seventh place with six points, thanks, Shani Davis), and I’m still planning on, you know, watching the rest of the Games. But I would like to beat NBC with flaming sticks. For a couple of reasons.

First, the tape delay. Look, I know that NBC paid a shitload of money for the exclusive broadcast rights and wants to air as much of the Games as possible in primetime, because primetime commercials cost more and that’s how they make the fancy money. I work in media; I get it. But for the LOVE OF SHAUN WHITE. NBC was able to sweet-talk the Chinese into scheduling every single one of Michael Phelps’s finals in primetime, that is, at like 9:30 in the morning Beijing time. I understand that several Olympic sports, namely, the skiing, are dependent on daylight, and therefore can’t be held at 10 p.m. when it’s conducive to East Coast television schedules. But there are a number of sports that are competed indoors, namely, the massive ratings draw that is figure skating, and both snowboard halfpipe and freestyle moguls can be done at night, under lights. Not to be all EST-centric about it, but would it EFFING KILL YOU to schedule those at like 5 o’clock West Coast time and air them live? On both coasts? Because here’s the thing: I don’t like finding out who wins nine hours before I watch the race! It’s anticlimactic! It makes still-miked Lindsey Vonn sobbing happily into her husband’s chest somewhat less poignant for me! You know what I like? Suspense! Maybe if NBC put the tiniest bit of effort into preserving some of the element of surprise, we wouldn’t be all, “What, that? I heard about that five hours ago!”

Second: The Interwebs. So NBC has insisted on tape-delaying various events, including snowboard cross, skiing events, and all the short track events that don’t involve Apolo Ohno, which are relegated to the late night block with Mary Carillo and her dead eyes (more on that later). BUT. They still have live results on nbcolympics.com, so if you wander over there during the day to, say, check on how your pet luger is doing, you’ll see a great big animated graphic trumpeting Seth Wescott’s surprise repeat gold. When you had planned on watching that race after you finished your work.

I’m just confused about why NBC can’t manage to stick to one or the other. Either you’re going to tape-delay the events, and make us wait to watch them, OR you’re going to tell us who won as soon as they happen. WHY ARE YOU DOING BOTH?! It’s infuriating. Almost as infuriating as the fact that there’s nothing on the television for me to watch at work other than CURLING. SERIOUSLY. Today, there was nothing on except curling on USA until 3 p.m., when NBC started showing tape-delayed cross-country skiing. While the ladies’ downhill was happening, as told me. Pat, interestingly, is actually attending the Olympics with his family. And he’s a more efficient news source when he’s on vacation than NBC is while doing their effing jobs. DUDE, NBC. Stop sucking.

Third, the insane features. I know it’s a hoary cliché with, like, cobwebs on it at this point to talk about how NBC’s features are maudlin, overblown, and ridiculous. But I think they’re even worse this year. Don’t get me wrong; I love anything that reminds me that Evgeni Plushenko is a Bedazzled Darth Vader. But in Beijing, we had NBA players wandering around the Great Wall of China, and that, at least, was kind of interesting, because Dwight Howard looks funny next to befuddled Chinese tour guides. In Vancouver, which from all accounts is a completely lovely city full of delightful people, good food, and high-qualify drugs, we have MARY GODDAMN CARILLO asking some poor Yukoner when he first met a polar bear. DURING LIVE SPORTS, Mary “I do love tennis” Carillo and her dead eyes are interrogating innocent Canadians about their wildlife! WHAT THE FUCK, NBC.

This is not to say there aren’t good things. NBC finally took Dick Button out of the figure skating commentators’ booth (although they retained underminery Sandra Bezic and excitable gnome Scott Hamilton), and they’ve hired some reasonably intelligent people to call sports they specialize in, like Jonny Moseley, who did a respectable job with moguls, and Dan Jansen, who barely looks like he’s aged since his Visa commercial. And have I mentioned how I enjoy Brian Williams? I do. And I like how the Today Show folks are calling their satellite studio “Studio 1-Eh.”

Oh! But one other thing? What the HELL is up with all the fucking Dreamworks promos? It’s not just that the creators of How to Train Your Dragon bought like forty-seven-thousand ad spots during these Games, NO. They actually paid to have the commentators kick to the ad with drivel like, “Well, if you thought that ski jumping was great, wait till you see what our friends at Dreamworks have dreamed up! They think they know how Vikings might have ski jumped!” And then there are some antiseptic animations that make Shrek look like Akira and it SUCKS.

I’m too tired and tipsy (happy birthday, Kyle) to look up whether NBC has already bought the exclusive rights to the London Games. I seriously effing hope they haven’t. I don’t remember much about how the networks covered the Games pre-NBC hegemony, but SOMEONE has got to give Dick Ebersol a fucking wakeup call. Because if they’re this inept when the Games are happening three hours before us, how viciously crappy is it going to be when they’re five hours ahead?

This does not mean I am not excited about the figure skating tomorrow night. It means I want to smack some sense into Dicks Ebersol and Button, because they are RUINING THIS FOR EVERYONE. Also, I am not too dignified to say that I kind of want to see Lindsey Vonn’s gnarly shin bruise. And I want to know what cheese can do for you. Fuck, that is some air Shaun White is grabbing, yeah?

I’ve been watching Rescue Me on DVD over the past few weeks, and thanks to the lovely people at FX publicity, I’m now caught up on season 5. And it’s a pretty great show, if we don’t talk about season 4. I enjoy the camaraderie of the firehouse, the ensemble cast does great work, the action scenes are incredible and heartbreaking, and yeah, Denis Leary is a moderately good actor who created a damn good show. And Daniel Sunjata is phenomenally good looking. Also . Damn. And John Scurti is just a funny, wonderful actor.

There’s just one thing. This one person. Who is DRIVING ME INSANE.

The rest of this will give away a lot of plot, FYI. In case you were thinking of catching up, which I recommend. But seriously, skip season 4.

Sheila Keefe is the widow of Tommy’s cousin, Jimmy, who died on Sept. 11. In season 1, Tommy and Sheila had an affair and she got pregnant. In season 2, she had a miscarriage and started dating women, one of whom beat the ever-living shit out of her. That was unpleasant. In season 3, she bought a beach house on Long Island where she was convinced she and Tommy would retire and live happily ever after. When Tommy told her he wasn’t running away with her, she drugged him and burned the house down, nearly killing them both and kicking off a horrible insurance fraud storyline in season 4. Also in season 4 she tried to get Tommy to give her the baby that (stay with me here) Tommy’s wife, Janet, had with his brother Johnny. (But the baby might be Tommy’s. Janet was sleeping with both brothers.) Then she named the baby Elvis. Now, in season 5, her son, Damian, has become a probie (rookie) firefighter in the same house where Tommy works.

And throughout all these delightful developments, Sheila has been a screaming, crying, drinking, cursing, lying, cheating, miserable harpy. All of which I could handle if she was entertaining. She’s not. She’s just loud and mean and repetitive. She’s been screaming the same five things at Tommy the entire show, and now she’s transferred all of her neurosis onto screaming because her only son is a firefighter, the occupation that (let’s not forget) killed her husband. While I can understand where she’s coming from with all of this, I’m not enjoying it. She’s just a manic pain in the ass and every scene she’s in makes me want to scratch my eyes out with broken glass.

When she’s not screaming for justifiable reasons, she’s screaming for unjustifiable ones. In the course of the show, she has twice drugged Tommy with roofies and Viagra and proceeded to rape him, then told him the next morning that he got drunk and blacked out. He’s an alcoholic, and was sober at the time, so it’s really a dick move. And then there was the part where she convinced Tommy to give her Janet’s baby. I’m more inclined to chalk that up to desperate writers and a lousy plot twist, but it’s easier to blame it on Sheila being horrible.

In the extra features on one of the DVDs, Peter Tolan, who created the show with Leary, slyly said that, well, it is a show about people with really dangerous jobs, so the cast had better stay in line or someone might be getting burned up. I wish they would set Sheila on fire and then never talk about her again. And Damian too. God, he’s fucking annoying.

This week on Gossip Girl: Graduation! And Cyrus came back! I bet you can guess which I am more excited about. I’d like to know whose idea the green robes on the girls and blue on the boys was. Because that shit was ugly. But I can honestly say I’ve never loved Gossip Girl herself so much as on this episode, when she finally effing called it like it was. Oh snap, Kristen Bell.

So Gossip Girl flamed all the major characters during graduation, and the hideous four set out to find out who that nefarious slag is. And it was ERIC’S BOYFRIEND JONATHAN OMG. Oh wait, it’s not. Damn. That would be awesome, but it wouldn’t explain last season’s outings.

And then Jenny and Blair’s wretched former minions had a deeply ridiculous conversation about how they’re going to choose a new “Queen.” Yeah, because people talk like that. I hate Jenny so much. Why are we talking about Anne Boleyn?! Where is Jonathan Rhys Meyers? I’m so confused.

Nate’s party: Nelly loves Dan. Jenny knows that Blair slept with Uncle Jack Bass and plans to use that to become the Marquess de Constance, or whatever the fuck. So then Gossip Girl did a full season recap, which was kind of amazing. And then Blair asked Dan, “What do you know about anything?” Which was great. Because FINALLY.

And then Rufus and Lily stopped acting like morons and got engaged. And Gossip Girl is no one and everyone is going to NYU and Serena and Dan’s creepy not-dead half-brother showed up and Blair neutered Chuck with a box of French macaroons and this IS SO FUCKING STUPID, MAN. Eff this noise. I’m on vacation.

We have hit a new low: Rufus actually called his kids part of “the Gossip Girl generation.” Shut up, Rufus. Further proof that Gossip Girl can be summed up in one-liners, Chuck to Nate: “I don’t know how many times we need to have this conversation.” Seriously, show. Look, the Serena-in-jail stuff is just so ludicrous that it makes my face hurt. The only thing worse is Brittany Snow shoveling heaps of exposition onto Andrew McCarthy in the execrable Beverly Hills Upper East Side flashback scenes. Ugh.

I think we can all agree that Lily is awesome. She and Eric are basically the only things left about this show that don’t make me want to stick hot forks in my eyes and ears. But teenage Lily is an asshole. God, I hope Nikki Finke is right about the spinoff being dead on arrival.

Oh, look, there’s No Doubt.

I will give the producers minor, minor, tiny little props for recycling Veronica Mars cast members and telling Ryan Hansen to call someone his lady. Because he says it with such relish and it reminds me of a better, sweeter, LESS FUCKING BORING time on the CW. (Oh my God. I actually miss Dick Casablancas. I’m going to go gargle with bleach now.) Okay, I take it back: cast member, singular. Because Gia is still annoying as fuck.

And then everyone went to prom and Nelly Yuki said, so truthinessily, “Yeah, because if you do this stuff in college, people think you’re pathological.” Nelly, we already think you’re all pathological. Then Serena took her clothes off in a cab and got lockjaw, because, ew, and Dan is an idiot who didn’t bring her a bra with her prom dress. Egad, honey. Those cans need underwire.

Even Leighton Meester can’t sell a line like “this is supposed to be the happiest day in high school.” She played her entire dancing-with-Nate scene like she’d recently been tranquilized and had her jaw wired shut, which is something I wish the producers would do to so many other people on this show, but not Blair. I feel duty-bound to point out, though, as someone who has both kinds, that even if Rufus and Lily get married, Dan and Serena will not be half-siblings. They’ll be step-siblings, like Cher and Josh. Half-siblings share blood. Step-siblings can bang, although it’s a little creepy, even if it is California, not Kentucky. Clear, Gossip Girl writers? Don’t make me take off my belt.

Warning: The post is filled with Lost spoilers.

A list of characters I remember who have died on Lost:

Alex (shot by Keamy)
Leslie Arzt (blew up)
Mikhail Bakunin (speared)
Boone Carlyle (falling death)
Michael Dawson (‘sploded)
Naomi Dorrit (knifed)
Mr. Eko (monster mashed)
Daniel Faraday (killed by mom)
Paulo & Nikki (razzle-dazzle)
Neil “Frogurt” (flaming arrow)
Scott Jackson (or was that Steve?)
Keamy (shot by Ben)
Charlotte (unstuck in time)
Claire Littleton (maybe?)
Ana Lucia & Libby (shot by Michael)
Joanna Miller (pointlessly drowned)
Nathan (neck snapped by Goodwin)
Seth Norman (monster snack)
Charlie Pace (hero’s death)
Ethan Rom (shot for revenge)
Danielle Rousseau (ambushed)
Shannon Rutherford (shot by Ana Lucia)
Goodwin Stanhope (impaled by Ana Lucia)

That’s not counting all of the Oceanic and Ajira passengers that didn’t make it through the crashes to begin with, anonymous Others who died in random shootouts,  everybody else on the freighter, passers-by who were killed by Lost characters in their adventures off the island, people who seem to have dissipated into thin air (Rose? Bernard? Vincent?), or any of the people in the Lostpedia list that I’ve barely heard of.

So, when Jack asks Kate for one good reason why he shouldn’t detonate a hydrogen bomb, the correct answer is, “Because you’re going to kill the few of us that are left.” Not, “Because then we never would have met.” I’m sorry, Kate. Your pissy, on-again, off-again romance with Jack is not worth the life of one Frogurt, let alone someone like Boone (who, we all remember, is God’s Friggin Gift to Humanity). I’d want to set off the bomb just to stop you from whining.

This week on Gossip Girl, Serena revealed that she might actually be the dumbest person in the freaking world, even dumber than Rufus. Seriously, there are smarter boxes of doorknobs. I think this whole Gabriel Ponzi Scheme plot might be the writers’ idea of a “topical” storyline. And that is as nauseating as TARP wives bitching about how they can’t go to Bergdorf’s as often.

Also horrifying? Rufus decided it would be a good idea to ask ERIC FOR HIS PERMISSION before he proposes to Lily. Because Eric is “the man of the house.” I … just … that’s so hideous. Does he know that the Upper East Side isn’t actually Saudi Arabia, despite some overlapping among the higher-end boutiques? Feminism fail, Stephanie Savage.

Here’s the problem with the Georgina-found-Jesus-but-is-actually-still-evil story. Michelle Trachtenberg is not a good enough actress to make it believable that she’s pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, and she’s playing Carrie Underwood!Georgina as if she’s had a lobotomy, not heard the Good News. (Tomato, tomahto to some, I guess.) Her bubbly, brainless intonations make me long for the days of Jenny and that revolting tramp Agnes.

Chuck and Nate are still having a pissing contest over Blair. Oh, Nate. Remember when you wanted to go to USC? That was a good idea. They like dim, self-important stoners like you over on that coast. So you should go! Because CHUCK LOVES BLAIR. And so he broke her heart again. That made me terribly sad because they were the greatest part of this show.

So part of everyone’s brilliant plan(s) to get back all the money Gabriel swindled that don’t include calling the police like NORMAL PEOPLE is for Lily to pay everyone back herself (I guess all that Bass money goes a long way), including setting up an annuity for Rufus so he can pay for college. When he found out, he was horribly insulted, and stamped his foot about how humiliating it was. Yeah, Rufus, like asking a woman’s minor son for his permission to marry her? Yeah. Kind of like that, you asshole.

All right, next week is the Lily show spinoff pilot. And the week after that is prom! Whee, pretty dresses.

Hey, Lily’s back! Maybe she and her baby bump skipping the gym because she’s having all that sex with Rufus belly can rescue the show from the doldrums of irrelevance it slipped into last week. Since Blair is having an affair with sleazy Carter, prompting Chuck to make all sorts of filthy plays on words, things look promising. And none too soon; God, Nate is tedious.

So Nate’s grandfather is a Vanderbilt and owns half of Connecticut. (That house looks like where I went to college, seriously.) For some reason, Sir Manbangs of Balsawood takes Dan and Vanessa with him to a family reunion so they can make snide remarks about being poor. Waah. And then they played football like they saw this one time when Wedding Crashers was on TBS.

Rufus and Lily are exchanging lists of people they slept with, which I think happened on Friends 10 years ago. The one page of Lily’s list that she showed him includes (and I’m wondering if this is in order, because if so, HEE): Gossip Girl‘s location manager; the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul (ew, Lily, really?); Trent Reznor; Slash; Rufus; Bart, obviously; and no one else I could discern/recognize. The rest of the list was probably people who’ve given the show good reviews and/or went to school with Josh Schwartz. And Lily wears like forty pounds of rhinestones just to sit around the house making lists of her paramours, which I find hilarious and aspire to. And really? His list fit on an index card? He was a minorly successful ’90s rock star. No groupies, Rufus? That “I was pining for youuuuuu, Lily!” excuse does not wash for me. Liar.

As Blair tried to incinerate what was left of her reputation after the horrible, appalling sin of “hazing a teacher” (seriously, there’s a box they can tick for that?) got her barred from every reputable college on the east coast, I realized I’m really tired of hearing about all these scandalous things the children did in the past that are now coming to the light/being used as leverage to blackmail people. Like Serena and whatever happened on a yacht in Santorini with Carter (um, he returned her missing magical pants?) when she was, apparently, in the sixth grade. I don’t buy this because teenagers have really short memories. No matter how devious or prettily garbed they are, most high schoolers have a hard time remembering what happened at Homecoming, much less who did a Saskatoon Snowshoe on who else over Christmas break of freshman year. And honestly, I’d like to see some of this awesome scandal ON-SCREEN. What part of “show, don’t tell” do the Gossip Girl writers not understand? I feel like I’ve been asking for real drama for, like, a YEAR. Kill someone. Knock someone up. DO SOMETHING.

Nate and Blair sleeping together is a good start, Schwartz. Yay!

I do not understand people who purport to care about and make a point to watch the Oscars and then just bitch and bitch and bitch about how the show is too long, it’s so self-indulgent, and there are all these unnecessary montages. Every single year someone’s whingeing about how they’re dreading the length of the show and it’s going to be so overblown, and the organizers are giving pandering interviews about how they’re “really going to get it under three hours this year, folks, we promise!” and then they make the poor sucker who put an entire animated short on her MasterCard stand in the aisle to accept her award. Here’s a solution for everyone: Don’t watch the show.

Honestly, it is an awards show for actors, the most self-obsessed people in the world short of Kim Jong-Il. If you don’t want to hear them thanking their personal trainers and giving the occasional speech about Palestine, don’t watch the show.

There are 24 awards categories. There’s also the dead people montage, the host’s opening song and dance, the couple minutes each nominee for Best Picture gets, the performances of the songs nominated for Best Original (and let’s talk about how ridiculous it is that they all get shoehorned into a medley), and whatever other history-of-film points the producers want to make. Considering it’s live, that’s not going to be a short program. So if you don’t want to watch a four-hour show…don’t watch it. Or only watch part of it. I don’t understand why the show has to short-shrift the people who worked just as hard, if not harder, as the more famous nominees on sound editing, documentary shorts, and costumes so that the show clocks in at 3:50 instead of 4:06. We have TiFaux now. We can pause the show to go to the bathroom or send out for more pizza rolls. There is no need to make those more obscure nominees stand in the audience to accept their awards or line up on stage like the world’s most awkward dodgeball team while one’s name is announced and the other four try to look happy. Because one day, Kevin O’Connell will win. And at that time, the Susan Lucci of the Oscars will deserve his own standing ovation, running time be damned.

Maybe this would be easier if the show wasn’t such a colossal event for ABC. I suggest the Oscars follow the lead of the Independent Spirit Awards and decamp to some smaller channel that has no problem giving them a five-hour block on a Sunday night (or a Saturday night for that fact, which would be awesomer). Like Sundance, or IFC, or freaking HBO. That would solve the cursing problem.

I’ve never heard anyone complain that the Super Bowl goes on for too long. And there’s just as much pageantry: the twelve-hour pregame show, the song before the national anthem, the national anthem, the coin toss, the flyover, the halftime show, the commercials, for crying out loud. Your average Sunday NFL game fits into about three hours; this year’s Super Bowl ended around 11 p.m., four and a half hours after kickoff. And, you know, no one really cares. They watch it till it’s over. If the Oscars really are the gay Super Bowl, they should get the same consideration: It ends when it ends, and if you’re tired, set the TiFaux, go to bed, and watch the rest during breakfast. Just shut up about it.